At Arstechnica, they say:
Fiction author Michael Crichton probably started the backlash against the idea of consensus in science. Crichton was rather notable for doubting the conclusions of climate scientists—he wrote an entire book in which they were the villains—so it’s fair to say he wasn’t thrilled when the field reached a consensus.
Still, it’s worth looking at what he said, if only because it’s so painfully misguided:
‘Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus.’
…
In physics, where particles either exist or don’t, five standard deviations are required.
While that makes the standards of evidence sound completely rational, they’re also deeply empirical. Physicists found that signals that were three standard deviations from the expected value came and went all the time, which is why they increased their standard. Biologists haven’t had such problems, but other problems have popped up as new technology enabled them to do tests that covered tens of thousands of genes instead of only a handful. Suddenly, spurious results were cropping up at a staggering pace. For these experiments, biologists agreed to a different standard of evidence.
It’s not like they got together and had a formal vote on it. Instead, there were a few editorials that highlighted the problem, and those pieces started to sway the opinions of not only scientists but journal editors and the people who fund grants. In other words, the field reached a consensus.
Consensus is the business of politics.
Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results.'” As a STEM major, I am somewhat biased toward “strong” evidence side of the argument. However, the more I read literature from other, somewhat-related fields (i.e. psychology, economics and climate science), the more I felt they have little opportunity to repeat experiments, similar to counterparts in traditional hard science fields. Their accepted theories are based on limited historical occurrences and consensus among the scholars.
Given the situation, it’s important to understand what “consensus” really means.
Full story here
h/t to nerdyalien
Here is a consensus case in point: The book Hundert Autoren Gegen Einstein (A Hundred Authors Against Einstein), is a collection of criticisms of Einstein’s theory of relativity. Published in 1931, it contains short essays from 28 authors, and published excerpts from 19 more. The rest of the 100 against Einstein was a list of 53 people who were also opposed to his theory of relativity for various reasons. 
When asked about this book, Einstein retorted with this:
“Why 100 authors? If I were wrong, then one would have been enough!”
In the case of the ‘Skeptic Science’ claimed ’97 percent’, we have at least three.
Surely that must be enough, unless of course this isn’t about science at all, but about the politics of power, oh, and money.
Leif Svalgaard
September 10, 2014 at 12:01 pm
Sometimes the hard evidence is simply ignored and that is where consensus becomes important. Hard evidence without consensus is worth exactly zero.
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Now I’m confused.
If nobody is around when that tree just missed falling on me in the forest, and I say it made a sound, that is not evidence it made a sound due to a lack of consensus ?
My comment was about people who deny the evidence, i.e. for your case deny that the falling tree made any noise. It doesn’t matter much if there is good evidence, but nobody pats any attention. Most scientists in their choice of research tend to select topics that have a fair chance of yielding interesting and significant results, and experience shows that the further from the consensus one is, the less likely is it that anything solid will result. A consensus shows that the topic has been vetted and found worthy by many scientists.
I was just playing with your comment, but now I read you as saying nobody “shoots for fences” anymore ?
I don’t believe it, nor do I want to.
Sitting on a fence hurts the derriere and does not further your research
If that were the case, we’d still be living in a geo-centric universe and all those things you listed up thread (evolution, plate techtonics, etc) would not have come about because in each case ,they came about precisely because scientists chose to follow the science instead of the “consensus” of their time.
You have not understood anything. A consensus is built on hard evidence. When new evidence becomes available or when old data is interpreted in new ways the consensus often changes. Scientists understand that and have qualms about changing their view point. So, a consensus reflects the best current interpretation of the best evidence we have.
Nonsense. The one not understanding is you. With hard evidence you don’t need consensus as the hard evidence is all you need. And indeed, when it comes to climate science (the very topic of this thread) the so-called 97% consensus isn’t built on hard evidence at all. which just goes to show you are talking nonsense.
Some people refuse to even look at the evidence. So evidence alone is not enough. To make progress a consensus [i.e general acceptance] about what is considered knowledge is needed. This establishes a common frame of reference, a paradigm, within one can confidently work, without spinning wheels first to fight the cranks.
What you describe is not science, it’s politics. Those that refuse to look at the evidence are, by definition, not practicing science as such true scientists need not worry about them when practicing science. Any one who needs to appeal to authority (which is what “there’s a consensus/the debate is over” is) is not practicing science, they’re practicing politics.
Akk, I of course meant to say “swings for the fences” in my last comment.
Not sure if this has been posted previously, but even the ‘Guardian’ has now acknowledged the existence of the 15+ year ‘hiatus’, and further, that the
computer gamesclimate models are now proven incapable of predicting the ‘hiatus’, and have therefore completely failed – and further, that “the hiatus could end in the next few years”, or on the other hand, perhaps not .So, as the entirety of the high sensitivity water vapour positive feedback driven AGW hypothesis is based purely on the predictions of the aforementioned
computer gamesclimate models, it is clear that in the case in question the conclusion of the much-vaunted “consensus” is completely incorrect.Konrad 2:17am: Persists in basic misunderstanding of planetary atmosphere optical depth physics.
As an atmosphere total optical depth (tau) decreases, an atmosphere absorbs less energy beamed through. Konrad incorrectly concludes as tau decreases, an atmosphere will do the opposite, absorb more energy beamed through and increase in temperature by 80C “or beyond” (Buzz Lightyear fiction term).
Consensus of evidence, yes. Consensus of people, is a social (e.g. political), not scientific, construct.
Indeed it is. And those that insist it isn’t are as far from science as you can get even if they claim to be scientists.
Leif Svalgaard says: September 11, 2014 at 9:21 am
Leif, while I rarely disagree with you, in this case I think you have the stick by the wrong end.
A consensus has nothing to do with evidence, hard or otherwise. It is just another word for an agreement. The consensus used to be that there were witches, despite a total lack of evidence that witches existed. A consensus is nothing an agreement between the participants, it says nothing about whether what they believe in is evidence-based in any form.
Yes, you are right that they can agree on hard evidence … or in the case of the consensus on climate, they can agree that CO2 roolz temperature, when we have no observational real-world evidence that it does anything of the sort. Yes, it works that way in the lab … but only a fool would think that working in the lab is evidence that it would work that way in an active, responding, emergent system like the climate.
In fact, the evidence we do have shows that a) the recent 1976-1998 increase in temperatures is statistically indistinguishable from earlier warmings despite rapidly increasing CO2, and b) the models (based on the current climate paradigm that CO2 roolz temperature) have failed to predict the current lack of warming, and c) every prediction based on the idea that CO2 roolz temperature (future temperature rises, sea level rise acceleration, increase in extreme events, climate refugees, etc. ad nauseum) have in the event uniformly proven to be not just wrong, but in many cases ridiculously wrong.
So no, the climate consensus is far from the “best current interpretation of the best evidence”. It is a chimera that, as near as I can tell, is based almost entirely on a religious belief that CO2 roolz temperature … no surprise, we’ve seen lots of consensi before that were based on religious beliefs and that featured a string of failed predictions, a total lack of supporting evidence and a preponderance of opposing evidence.
Leif, the climate alarmists and the mainstream climate scientists have been looking for the “fingerprint” of CO2 warming for nearly forty years now, and have not found the holy grail. Heck, they can’t even narrow the CI on the so-called “climate sensitivity” despite expending enough computer time and man-hours to figure out the meaning of everything … surely those colossal failures despite four decades of immense effort should tell you something about whether there is anything like “hard evidence” …
w.
Simplest explanation: climate alarmists are not doing science.
On that we agree. Neither is anyone who appeals to authority, such as the authority of a consensus
In science, consensus is not appealing to authority.
so close Leif, you are almost there. In science onsensus is not appealing to authority *because* science does not deal with consensus, that is the realm of politics. When one starts talking consensus they’ve stopped talking science.
Well said Willis.
According to Merriem Websters a consensus is:
noun, often attributive \kən-ˈsen(t)-səs\
: a general agreement about something : an idea or opinion that is shared by all the people in a group
Notice what that definition does not say: anything about why the group holds that idea or opinion. So evidence, hard or otherwise has nothing to do with consensus all it is is “group think” which is the antithesis of true science.
Consensus or ‘general agreement’ in science means that the evidence is strong enough to convince most scientists that the proposition is a firm foundation to build further research on. You are conflating politics and science.
No, you are the one conflating science and politics. Here;s a hint for your Leif, “Consensus” is politics, not science. period.
The Scientific Method is pretty clear. Consensus is part of theory not proof. The 97% have been wrong in the past many times. If you want to make a judgment on something based on consensus you are 1) Lazy 2) not a scientist. Sorry.
Leif Svalgaard, 9/11/2014 @ur momisugly 9:21 am: A consensus is built on hard evidence. When new evidence becomes available or when old data is interpreted in new ways the consensus often changes. Scientists understand that and have qualms about changing their view point. So, a consensus reflects the best current interpretation of the best evidence we have.
1. What is your hard evidence for the existence of any consensus of any consequence on any scientific subject?
2. What consensus change due to a change in data or data interpretation on any subject is documented?
3. Climatologists who support IPCC claim their model of climate is supported by a consensus (supposedly the 97%). Would you agree with me that this consensus is self-referencing, a bootstrap? Would you agree with me that the consensus is those who support the model, and who tend to publish in peer-review journals that are house organs for the model?
4. Would you agree with me that consensuses exist in the same sense that dark matter and dark energy exist?
5. Let’s assume you would agree with me that Darwin created two models, one that species evolve, the fact (now) of evolution, and the other that the cause of evolution was Natural Selection. Further, let’s assume you would agree with me that a broad, nearly unanimous consensus exists among a diverse variety of scientifically literate people in support of both theories. Let’s assume that you have observed along with me that Darwin ascribed certain powers to Natural Selection, specifically including the ability to accumulate changes toward a goal of species adaptation, able to cause the extinction of varieties not headed in the right direction, and possibly more. Would you agree with me that these are the powers of a sentient being? Would you agree with me that these powers assume the powers of observation, the determination of better, best, and success in field trials among varieties, and the ability to give evolution a direction? Would you agree with me that these are supernatural powers, disembodied, having no sense organs and no corpus with which to store the information or by which to perform the requisite acts? Would you agree with me that what Darwin invented was therefore Supernatural Selection? Would you agree with me that science bars supernatural forces or beings from every scientific model? Would you agree with me that the consensus in support of Natural Selection is both wrong and unscientific?
Where did I go wrong?
Where did I go wrong?
Just about everywhere. Let me just deal with your first point:
http://www.leif.org/EOS/2010JA016220.pdf
For the 5th: Would you agree with me that these are the powers of a sentient being?
Of course not. No sentient being is needed nor involved.
Love it. Why, as an all powerful being, would such trivial matters matter when the natural process seems to work so well? Those of us with spiritual leanings must fight daily the desire to make God think, look, reason, create, and act, like us. Hell, there are probably folks out there who think God eats three square meals a day, drinks plenty of water, takes vitamins, and sleeps a good 8 hours. Intelligent design folks really need to re-read the book of Job.
Pamela Gray says on September 11, 2014 at 7:56 pm
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Pamela Gray,
Love it. Observational evidence showing the concept ‘is’ means anything but the concept ‘nature’ would be sincerely welcomed. What basis would there rationally be to say existence has dual reality where there in another type of ‘is’ beside nature? Dual ‘is’ is irrational. Plato, in ~250 BC, was wrong. (see ‘The Open Society and its Enemies: The Spell of Plato’ by Karl Popper***).
I really, really love it.
*** I disagree with Karl Popper’s epistemology somewhat ( a lot ), but in his analysis in that book does show the irrationality of all dual reality believers)
John
Your citation is Lockwood, M. et al., “Centennial changes in the heliospheric magnetic field and open solar flux: The consensus view from geomagnetic data and cosmogenic isotopes and its implications”, JGeoRes, Vol. 116, 4/21/2014. It uses the word consensus 6 times, once in the title, twice in the abstract, and once in the citation to the title, including just two in the main body, once in reference to Svalgaard and Cliver (2010) (p. 3/12), once in conclusions (p. 11/12). None of these could be said to meet the challenge, using your concept, to produce “hard evidence for the existence of any consensus of any consequence on any scientific subject”.
A consensus is a poll, for which you need to specify the number polled, and the number of responses. To be hard evidence you would need to produce how the sample was taken, what questions were asked, and the analysis to produce the estimate of who is in the consensus and who is not. Lockwood, et al. has none of that. It puts no numbers to the alleged consensuses, and in places seems to use consensus as synonymous with model. In short, by hard evidence did you not mean observed, measured, and compared with standards, that is, factual, and detailed?
As to the presence of a sentient being, I didn’t ask whether a sentient being was either necessary or involved. As to necessity, one can show that a natural selection exists in nature, and not according to Darwin’s model of Natural Selection. It is mathematical and logistical, based on the concept of niches and relative growth rates of populations.
Secondly as to involvement, of course a sentient being is not involved because the discourse is in the domain of science, which excludes sentient beings.
You answered “No” to the question whether NS needed sentience to know whether a variety was going in the right direction, to cause competition to go extinct, and to effect changes in the genetic evolution of the target variety incrementally, all with a goal of adapting it better or best to its environment. Since NS is disembodied, unlike Darwin’s analogy to humans doing domestic animal husbandry, those must be supernatural powers.
Scientific Consensus simply means that there is general [and usually unspoken] agreement on something. There is no poll. Most scientists become convinced of something if the evidence for that is strong and overwhelming. As simple as that. The rest of your comment is junk.
Leif S, 9/12/2014 @ur momisugly 6:46 am: Scientific Consensus simply means that there is general [and usually unspoken] agreement on something. There is no poll. Most scientists become convinced of something if the evidence for that is strong and overwhelming. As simple as that. The rest of your comment is junk.
At the top of this thread Leif S. contributed this: Consensus that is based on hard evidence is perfectly valid [and necessary]. Now he contradicts himself to say consensus is a general thing, simple, unspoken, involving the beliefs of “[m]ost scientists”, as if science, like consensuses, was about belief instead of fact, and as if he could divine the convictions of “[m]ost scientists”, the new silent majority.
LS proclaims: Good examples [of consensuses] are Evolution, … , Dark Matter, … . Now for each of these there are people that reject the hard evidence for different reasons of their own, none of them scientific.
When asked to defend his examples of consensuses, he dismisses the request as junk. When shown hard evidence that his key consensuses are not as he claimed, that is, not based on hard evidence, he dodges the issue as junk. People are not rejecting hard evidence as he supposes; people are rejecting arrogant, lazy, contradictory excuses for science in the guise of science.
Evolution, above, and dark matter, below, were fragile examples to show the weakness of LS’s notion of consensuses. The best example, of course, is the alleged consensus supporting Anthropogenic Global Warming, the latest political science. The warmists will cite Naomi Oreskes survey of published papers on climate, which she and her followers thought established the existence of a consensus that AGW exists. That would have been hard evidence of a consensus but for the fact that what she actually showed was that professional journals on climate do not publish papers that deviate an iota from the AGW dogma.
Consensus is a critical element of Post Modern Science, invented by Popper, and endorsed as scientific knowledge by the US Supreme Court in Daubert v. Merrell Dow. Since the WWII, PMS gained great traction in the schools of physical sciences because it tests models according to the academic standards of Publish or Perish, an element of Popper’s intersubjective testing.
Consensus has been no part of Modern Science since 1620 when created by Sir Francis Bacon. Contrary to Leif Svalgaard’s teaching, consensus is not only unnecessary, it is unwelcome. Real science is the objective branch of knowledge. It has zero tolerance for anything subjective, including consensus forming, peer-review, editorial review, social impact, and expert opinion. It thrives in industry absent all of those attributes. It has but one requirement: models must actually work, i.e., make novel, significant, validated predictions.
You have no idea what important role building a consensus has in science. I have personally built at least four. How many have you built?
A consensus emerges spontaneously when enough practicing scientists are convinced by hard and overwhelming evidence that a given finding should be accepted. Your ruminations about Evolution are just junk.
Congrats on being very good a politics. As that’s all the authority “I’ve built four” has.
Do dark matter and dark energy exist? The question of existence of anything has been chewing gum for philosophers at least since Plato, entertaining them for hours and hours. Philosophy is abstract; it can’t be concluded.
The scientific question is what attributes of these dark things are fact. What has been observed, measured, and compared to standards? Science is concrete; it seeks conclusions.
As things stand now, these dark things are fudge factors to make the equations of cosmology balance. They are scientific models, grade conjecture.
Consensus members need not bother themselves with such niceties. They only need to claim they exist.
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Jeff Glassman,
It is one major modern philosophy in the history of philosophy (the philosophy spawned a whole genre of philosophies in the late 19th and most of the 20th centuries) that is the owner and initiator of hypotheses exactly like your ”Science is concrete; it seeks conclusions”. And, in supporting that hypothesis about science, the major philosophy also disparages philosophy generically in ways exactly similar to your Philosophy is abstract; it can’t be concluded.
I think it is that philosophy’s abstract thinking which you cannot avoid using to support both your statements.
I suggest a further discussion about increasing understanding of modern trends in the history of the philosophy of science.
John
John, 9/13/2014 @ur momisugly 10:19 am,
The great successes in turn-of-the-century-last science, especially theoretical physics and biology, from Mach and half of Darwin through Einstein, caused sincere efforts to change the courses of philosophy and psychology. In the latter, the impetus arose out of psychometrics, created by Galton (circa 1888), and Spearman (1904), who thought he had uncovered general intelligence, g, by Factor Analysis. The magazine Psychometrika claimed the goal of psychology since that time was to make psychology scientific.
The evolution in philosophy began with meetings on the philosophy of science in Vienna by physicist Frank, mathematician Hahn, and sociologist Neurath. I show the highest ranking profession for the multi-disciplined according to the level of concreteness in their education: physical sciences > mathematics > philosophy. Everyone’s a philosopher.* Those meetings, interrupted first by a new chair for Frank and then by WWI, re-emerged in 1922 under philosopher Moritz Schlick as the Vienna Circle. Schlick’s objective was to elevate philosophy to philosopher Wittgenstein’s teachings, called synonymously Empirical Positivism, Logical Positivism, or vanilla Positivism. From then forward, the plan was the philosophers’ wish to make their field scientific, too.
Both failed. Several mathematicians showed that Factor Analysis measures not physical relationships, but fudged mathematical ones. Popper claims not only that Positivism is dead, but that he was the proud executioner. Regardless of the outcomes and the mechanisms, both objectives were doomed from the start. The concepts of the humanities are in general not susceptible to measurement and comparison with standards. This places the humanities out of the reach of science, but not the reverse. Many of the humanities can reach anything. Evolution.
The conflict between science and religion, a prototype model for philosophy, is the over-reaching of the philosophy. It is the confusion of faith and fact. Science expands, so must inevitably expand into what was formerly the realm of philosophy, the science of sciences that explains everything. The wise philosopher would make room in his faith for what can be measured and predicted. Technology has no reverse gear. The wise scientist will take off his scientist’s hat and put on his philosopher’s hat when he wants to extrapolate beyond the fact-bound realm of his empirical world and his assumption that a Real World exists. *Everyone’s a philosopher. Uniformitarianism is a guiding principle, a conjecture not a law.
Science is the mapping of facts onto facts. One can have a measure of justice or love, but no one can measure either. A common error of scientists is the belief that they and science deal with the Real World. The error occurs on this thread where one scientist declares that Dark Matter and Dark Energy exist. It occurs when scientists think that the laws of science are discoveries of nature’s laws. All false. Science doesn’t deal with the Real World, which in science only exists axiomatically. Existence, without more, is a philosophical concept, not a scientific one. Science deals with projections of the Real World on the senses and man’s instruments. Science deals only with things that can be observed, measured, and compared to standards, things called facts.
The presence of facts to the exclusion of everything else is what makes science concrete. It is the lack of that exclusivity that makes the humanities abstract. And in coming to this conclusion, I started with science. I don’t think I used abstract thinking from philosophy, or from any source. Philosophy doesn’t make predictions, or permit drawing conclusions.
A discussion about the trajectory of philosophy might be fun, but it cannot be conclusive. It would be like consensuses and opinion polls, which, except for elections, cannot be validated, meaning have a showing that future facts fit within the clouds of uncertainty surrounding the predictions. I don’t think we could decide right now what happened to Logical Positivism.
when scientists think that the laws of science are discoveries of nature’s laws. All false. Science doesn’t deal with the Real World,
Yet, the laws of science that you do not deal with the real world work wonderfully in constructing the things our civilization relies upon or accomplishes, like lasers, GPS, electron microscopes, going to the moon, landing on comets. All real stuff constructed and you claim are based on false and unreal notions. It is clear that your grasp of science is less than sufficient for a meaningful discussion [as your comments so starkly confirm].
Participate in a dialog Modern science does not progress via dialogs, by from experiment and deductions from those. Furthermore, a dialog presumes at least some modicum of common ground and background knowledge which seem to be so sorely lacking in your comments.
Jeff Glassman on September 13, 2014 at 2:37 pm
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Jeff Glassman,
The philosophy of logical positivism, which is just a portion of the broader philosophy of analysis, are totally consistent with the source of these (below) two statements of yours. I know of no other philosophy which is totally consistent with them. Your two statements are not only totally owned by the philosophy of analysis and its offspring logical positivism , one those statements consists of two of its most important founding abstract ideas.
“Science is concrete; . . .” is the abstract metaphysical idea of Analysis and Logical Positivism which is called Logical Atomism . Logical Atomism is the abstract idea that the universe is only ‘simple facts’ where each ‘simple fact’ is independent of all other ‘simple facts’. Logical Atomism’s ‘simple facts’ are the same as your “concretes”.
You hold that “. . . ; it [science] seeks conclusions” in the face of your claim that existence for science is concretes (Logical Atomism’s metaphysically abstraction) when logic must be used for conclusions. What allows you to use logic to achieve your scientific conclusions when logic is not a concrete fact? Logic is an abstract product of applied reasoning; logic is not ‘conretes’. Also, you are implying that science’s conclusions can be validated (or rejected) using another abstract idea of Analysis and Logical Positivism which is the abstract idea called by Analysis and Logical Positivism the ‘verifiability theory of meaning’ which Popper tried valiantly so hard for his whole life to save. Popper held to the views of the Analysists and Logical Positivists in this area of ‘verifiability theory of meaning’.
“Philosophy is abstract; it can’t be concluded” if true then also applies to your conception of science as I pointed out above. You self-refute your position on science and philosophy.
I note that in your comment (Jeff Glassman on September 13, 2014 at 2:37 pm) you have unambiguously adopted a metaphysical abstract idea of dualism in reality that is essentially Kant’s. Kant’s theory is arguably the most convoluted abstract conception of metaphysics in the history of philosophy. How can you scientifically prove that adoption of Kant’s meatphysics given your stipulation that only concretes are allowed? I am sincerely interested.
John
I think that most scientists will dismiss all those arguments [pro et con] by saying “shut up and compute”. Things exist if you can measure their properties, regardless of philosophical nuances.
Leif Svalgaard on September 15, 2014 at 12:21 pm said,
I think that most scientists will dismiss all those arguments [pro et con] by saying “shut up and compute”. Things exist if you can measure their properties, regardless of philosophical nuances
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Leif Svalgaard,
If what you said is what most scientists want to do, they should do it. However, we see some of those same scientists also venture into saying that abstracts cannot be concluded yet they use abstracts to make their conclusion and use metaphysical abstracts to say fundamental things about reality as premises to their arguments while disparaging abstracts per se. It makes such scientists look like they do not understand the fundamental concepts (abstracts) that science necessarily must depend on. In that regard they weaken science by not knowing its intellectual basis.
John
Conrad Goehausen (@conradgoehausen) September 12, 2014 at 12:38 pm
My general impression as an outsider to the field is that there’s something of a discontinuity between the astrophysicists and the particle physicists on the question of dark matter. Most of the people I know are particle physicists, and they are much more skeptical of these deductions from astrophysical observations. It would seem natural that you are more in touch with the astrophysics community, and so naturally agree with their assumptions and conclusions.
This may be related to the fact that for particle physicists, gravity is not a problem. It does not enter into their standard model, so is not seen as important. For astrophysicists, gravity is the ultimate cause of everything, of structure, galaxies, stars, planets, and people, so we tend to think more deeply about gravity
Jeff, it took hard work by parents and one or two scientists to begin the turn and then nurture that turn related to the consensus that autism was caused by cold mothers, to what it is today. Without that turn in the consensus to a new consensus, we would still be institutionalizing these children and damning their mothers to hell. It may take only one scientist to disprove an accepted theory. But if it stays at that level, it won’t make a damn bit of difference. The old theory will still hold sway. That’s reality.
Yes, Pam [and Jeff], scientific consensus is important, vital, and necessary. Evidence alone is not sufficient as some people just ignore evidence, or misinterpret evidence. Case in point: Jeff’s rant about Natural Selection.
And people who ignore evidence are not following the scientific method and therefore are not scientists no matter what degree or how many papers they have published.
The evidence may be contradictory or tentative or marginal, so sitting on the fence is a prudent thing for a good scientist to do. Once the evidence is strong enough, consensus usually follows [and now sitting on the fence marginalizes you], again showing how important and valuable consensus is in science
Again you are talking politics not science. And, to clarify, by politics I do not mean elected governmental candidates stumping on the campaign trail. I mean politics as you find it in every walk of life where ever people gather in number. (for example office politics). your own words show the power of the politics, to wit ” sitting on the fence marginalizes you” that’s not science, that’s politics in it’s purest, nastiest form.
It is clear that you are not a practicing scientist and that you have no clue as to how scientific consensus emerges. I think it will be net to impossible for me to educate you on this. One last time: your belief that scientific consensus is just politics is severely mistaken. Scientists do not bow to authority. On the contrary, it is every scientists dream and hope to overturn established wisdom [‘prove Einstein wrong’].
And it is clear that you are so wrapped up in the politics of forming consensus that you’ve lost sight of the fact that science is supposed to be *OBJECTIVE*. Consensus by it’s very nature is “SUBJECTIVE*. If you can not see that, no one can educate you about the difference between the two.
one last time: consensus is not science, it’s politics plain and simple.
As I said: you are not to be influenced by discussion, facts, examples, etc, away from the rut you are in. And nowhere in the definition of Consensus does it say that it is politics. On the contrary, consensus in science simply means the general agreement that scientists by themselves come to when the evidence is good enough. Objective or subjective are not relevant here. If 100 people witness the same clear event, e.g. a tornado, the consensus that a tornado was present is objective, although it is the sum of 100 subjective views. So, consensus n science based on hard evidence is a good thing.
No, it;s in the definition of politics which deals with the relations between people. Consensus is an agreement (which is a form of relation) between people. But the one that is “not to be influenced by discussion, facts, examples,” would be the one who ignores the meaning of words (the definition of Consensus has been given to you previously) and insists that Consensus is all about the strength of evidence (something that is compeletly absent from the definition) and the person who continually appeals to various authorities (number of papers published, the number of consensuses they’ve built, etc) as a means of dismissing out of hand what others tell him.
you say:
“On the contrary, consensus in science simply means the general agreement that scientists by themselves come to when the evidence is good enough.”
In an ideal world that would be the case. In the real world, as we’ve seem via climate gate (who is it that isn’t influenced by examples?), that isn’t necessarily so. And the reason why it isn’t necessarily so is because consensus isn’t an objective scientific concept *at all*, it’s a subjective social (ie political) one. “general agreement” is not science, it’s political pure and simple. And yes, objective vs subjective is very relevant – at least if one is talking about science. If one is merely concerned with politics, that it wouldn’t be an issue.
In science, ‘general agreement’ [aka consensus] is NOT an agreement among people. It is a view that each scientist comes to individually based on the strength of the evidence, regardless of what other people think. My experience [based on 50 years as a scientist] is that this is close enough to the ‘real world’ to be relevant. Your example with ‘climate science’ may simply show that climate science is not science in the first place, but politics. You cannot carry that over to science in general.
lsvalgaard, 9/12/2014 @ur momisugly 9:19 pm: You have no idea what important role building a consensus has in science. I have personally built at least four. How many have you built?
A consensus emerges spontaneously when enough practicing scientists are convinced by hard and overwhelming evidence that a given finding should be accepted. Your ruminations about Evolution are just junk.
No one is fooled. Lief Svalgaard continues his crusade for PMS, though under a new name.
LS is an example of the profound human need to have one’s mental model endorsed by a great majority. The political power that that can produce is obvious, as in political parties, trade unions, street politics like the Occupiers vs the 1%, and more sophisticated movements like AGW vs the 3%. Less obvious are the endorsements of one’s religion, whether by crusaders, missionaries, or simply access to the one true way through individual conversions. The five tenets of PMS include consensus, which apparently has become yet another core human need: food and water, shelter, clothing, and consensus.
As shown to LS above, the existence he claims for Dark Stuff is confounded by the inability of science or philosophy, two mutually exclusive intellectual pursuits, to establish the existence of anything since the dawn of written language. To establish the existence of the Real World, science must resort to an axiom. Einstein and Schlick created a storm in philosophy when they ventured into the parameters of what lay just beyond the reach of science.
LS also claims not just that consensuses exist, but that he can observe them. Now LS is a scientist, despite his confusion over existence and consensus. He not only perceives that he works with consensuses, he challenges others to do the same. Perhaps his peers are just being kind. But what is most surprising is that a scientist would rely on anything in his practice that he can’t, or won’t even attempt to, measure.
Both of us are on a crusade to promote scientific literacy, LS as a Popperist. He has contracted the academic virus of PMS, and apparently is immune to antiviral medication, a dose of MS. When offered treatment categorically, he refuses to engage as a real scientist would, point by point, but instead dismisses the entire remedy as a rant and junk.
So the treatment is over, and it’s time to assess the results. We can now go back to the title of this thread, where it puts the subject in scare quotes: ‘scientific consensus’. After introducing Arstechnica and Fiction author Michael Crichton lies a layered quotation of ambiguous origin: “‘Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus.’[”]
The quotation is not correct for PMS; it is correct for MS. The scare quotes are appropriate for the latter.
You have this backwards: you note that consensus does not make science. In reality, it is science that makes consensus. My challenge to you still stands: how many scientific papers have you written? and how much consensus have they resulted in? If none, then your opinion carries no weight.
Appeals to authority are not science, and that’s exactly what you are doing right there, Leif, appealing to authority.
Nonsense. As long as there is no consensus [not based on authority, but on evidence] among scientists themselves, the evidence is not considered as conclusive [even if they may be] and most people will sit on the fence and little will happen. The ‘authority’ here is the majority of thoughtful and expert scientists, and that is usually required to make progress [building on established knowledge]. Scientists will decide for themselves if the evidence is good enough and consensus will emerge naturally. And, as such, it is usually a good idea to listen to the experts. You don’t ask the janitor for a second opinion just before major surgery. But you are ducking my challenge: what scientific papers have you published establishing a new consensus? Appealing to authority, btw, trumps appealing to fools, cranks, and other assorted know-nothings.
Nonsense Leif. Consensus is a political, not a scientific concept. But that’s not what I was talking about in the post you are responding to here, as you well know. I was talking to your appealing to the authority of having papers written in order to dismiss out of hand what someone else in this discussion was saying to you. How many papers a person has or has not written it total irrelevant to the topic at hand, as you well know. And having 1 paper or 1000 to your name still won’t make a political concept a scientific one. Since you can’t win the argument on the merits you appeal to authority instead. Shame on you.
This is where you go wrong or have too narrow a view. Scientific consensus is not political and does not appeal to authority, but the the quality of the evidence. If you cannot grasp that, what is there to discuss? In most fields of science there are seminal papers that bring forth a new consensus, not because the authors are ‘authorities’, but because they present good evidence or compelling arguments. Scientists do not bow to authority as such. The evidence has to be good. And this has nothing to do with PMS or MS or NS.
I think you are confusing me with someone else as I haven’t said one word about PMS or MS or NS. But that aside, pointing to a consensus (as in there’s a consensus the debate is over) is an appeal to authority. as is trying to dismiss what someone on a message board has to say to you based on the number of papers they have had published.
And sorry to break it to you, but despite your endless blatter about consensus being about “quality of the evidence” it’s no such thing (which is no doubt why “quality of the evidence” appears nowhere in the definition of the word). It *could* be. And one would hope that it *would* be. but it doesn’t have to be, as climategate has amply illustrated, other things get thrown into the mix all too often – as is the nature of politics.
Pamela Gray, 9/13/2014 @ur momisugly 7:28 am: Jeff, it took hard work by parents and one or two scientists to begin the turn and then nurture that turn related to the consensus that autism was caused by cold mothers, to what it is today. Without that turn in the consensus to a new consensus, we would still be institutionalizing these children and damning their mothers to hell. It may take only one scientist to disprove an accepted theory. But if it stays at that level, it won’t make a damn bit of difference. The old theory will still hold sway. That’s reality.
What you observe in autism is something other than parental blame or rule by consensus. First, whoever was damning the mothers of autistic children was not a scientist, and was not a member of the consensus before or after the alleged change of course.
What changed was the definition of the disorder, a change paralleling the development of PMS, not science. Autism used to be a severe, debilitating disease, dooming its victims to permanent custodial care. The child that I had known since birth had a few times in his early years visited my homel. He would sit on the kitchen floor indefinitely banging on a cupboard door with the back of his left hand, a rhythm of 20 beats a minute. Such monotony was his sole contact with the real world, and it did keep him entertained. By the time he was ten, his parents had to padlock his bedroom at night. By the time he was 12, he was too strong for either parent to manage, and had to be institutionalized. He didn’t live another year, never speaking a word and never learning to do the minimums for himself. He was not my only experience with the specturm.
PMS psychology changed the disorder by edict into the spectrum disorder of autism. It turned subjective, blurring the boundaries between eccentric behavior (ADD, ADHD, normal two-year-old behavior) and the severe disabilities of the old autism. Given the list of a dozen or two symptoms (pick n out of N), no two psychologists are likely to agree on the details, except for those beyond reach. The great benefit to the syndrome approach is that it mollifies mothers, opening their purses (and insurers) to unlimited treatments for what could be imaginary ailments. It’s a boon for psychologists and the Ritalin industry.
A key difference between PMS and MS is that the former is entirely subjective and the latter exclusively objective. MS has yet to find the cause of debilitating autism. It is neither mothers, obviously, nor vaccinations, another fraud exposed by studies. PMS obfuscated the problem. Psychology, like the other social sciences, and philosophy are doomed to be outside Modern Science until the parameters of their arts can be reduced to fact.
Leif Svalgaard, 9/13/2014 @ur momisugly 8:02 am: Yes, Pam [and Jeff], scientific consensus is important, vital, and necessary. Evidence alone is not sufficient as some people just ignore evidence, or misinterpret evidence. Case in point: Jeff’s rant about Natural Selection.
Again LS demands evidence while at the same time hallucinating about unquantifiable consensuses. Formerly junk, he now calls my derivation a rant. Yet his only answer to my test of an apparent consensus among those with a modicum of scientific literacy was to deny that nature performing human-like animal husbandry must be the work of a sentient being. LS is unable to recognize that science advances not when a consensus blooms like a mold, but when one man punctures a consensus.
Lsvalgaard, 9/13/2014 @ur momisugly 8:47 am: You have this backwards: you note that consensus does not make science. In reality, it is science that makes consensus. My challenge to you still stands: how many scientific papers have you written? and how much consensus have they resulted in? If none, then your opinion carries no weight.≤/i>
Consensuses form around science like a suspension in zero gravity. It’s a human need. Consensuses represent what people adopt for belief, and then seek endorsement, often by evangelism, but never by science. Consensuses are a symptom of insecurity.
Kind of you to ask, but I couldn’t begin to count the number of my scientific papers. The great majority were in industry, hidden from the public. A couple of those resulted in patent-related awards (they were best protected as trade secrets). I published one paper in a professional journal on the Fast Fourier Transform. You can find it discussed on line as the “Glassman algorithm”. It’s a nice honor, but it’s not opinion. These papers have a following. They influenced the design and test of sensors, missiles, and manufacturing methods. But no scientist measures support. I have several technical papers posted on climate on my blog for real peer-review. I will say that I am pleased to see the shifting consensus away from AGW, and the occasional reliance on my analysis (e.g., The Acquittal of CO2, and SGW).
However, opinion is subjective. It lies in consensuses borne out of ignorance, and in peer-review and editorial review out of academia and the defense of dogma (consensuses). Collectively, I will remind you again that these are what Popper, the Father of PMS, called intersubjectivity. Modern Science is the objective branch of knowledge, and it is strictly objective. Opinion carries weight in MS only with regard to naming conventions honoring scientific models and their inventors, and then it is fraught with inconsistencies (e.g., Laws of Probability within Probability Theory; String Theory).
An interesting observation about the prevalence of PMS is how people well-trained in a scientific discipline will still have such an underdeveloped science literacy. Science literacy emerges from an inaccurate sense of science by intellectual osmosis. But it doesn’t happen to all well-trained scientists. It requires that their membrane not be impermeable.
cience advances not when a consensus blooms like a mold, but when one man punctures a consensus.
There is no progress unless the puncture leads to a new consensus. You see, consensus is necessary.
The ruminations about PMS and NS are junk, and have no place in serious scientific discussion.
That politics, Leif. Wheather a new consensus if formed or not does not change the objective results of true science. In science results are repeatable, what people think (consensus) won’t change the results one iota.
You may think it is politics, but that just shows that you don’t know what you are talking about. And, BTW, it is not true that ‘in science results are repeatable’. I hope I don’t have to insult your intelligence by having to explaine that any further.
And remember, just because a large number of people (a consensus) believe something, doesn’t make their beliefs correct. You insist consensus comes about because of hard evidence, but evidence is not a part of the definition of consensus. Consensus can form inspite of evidence (hard or otherwise) due to confirmation bias, group think, the echo chamber effect, corruption due to money (grant funding) being on the line, etc. That is why consensus is *NOT* scientific, because ultimately it’s not objective. It’s subjective opinion no matter how you dress it up.
The definition of Consensus is simply ‘general agreement’. In science you get to general agreement because the evidence is good enough and convincing enough to most people. This is science at its finest. Now, ‘general agreement’ is not just subjective opinion, but an objective measure of the strength of the evidence. By claiming that consensus is just politics, you are denigrating the work of serious, honest, and conscientious scientists, and I have the feeling that that was you goal all along.
You may think it is politics, but that just shows that you don’t know what you are talking about
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That you think it is anything other than politics just shows that you don’t know what you are talking about no matter what authorities you appeal to.
Lsvalgaard, 9/13/2014 @ur momisugly 12:30 pm: “Science advances not when a consensus blooms like a mold, but when one man punctures a consensus.” There is no progress unless the puncture leads to a new consensus. You see, consensus is necessary. [¶] The ruminations about PMS and MS are junk, and have no place in serious scientific discussion.
LS argues that consensuses are scientific. But he seems to have committed two logical fallacies in one sentence. The first is that the overturning of the old consensus is evidence that is was scientific. The second, the assumption of an (inevitable) emerging replacement consensus, would be evidence that the new consensus, and consensuses in general, are scientific. The latter seems to be the fallacy called Begging the Question. I’ll leave it to the logicians to put this sentence in symbols with the proper names for the fallacies.
LS has yet to show that consensuses are any better than rust, worse than useless – ugly and structurally weakening.
Perhaps “the ruminations about PMS and MS are junk” is true, but your declaration is what is known in law as ipse dixit. How about coming forth with some evidence instead of making naked claims, throwing darts at the wall. Participate in a dialog.
No, consensus is a human activity. In science, scientists may independently and without consultation with others reach consensus if the evidence is clear and good enough to guide the individual scientists to come to ‘general agreement’, i.e. consensus, at least in broad outline. People can still disagree about the details without the consensus falling apart. Such consensus building is fundamental to good science. As simple as that.
lsvalgaard
September 13, 2014 at 7:32 pm
No, consensus is a human activity.
===============
Indeed, a human activity, not a scientific one. Now you are getting it. 😉
scientists are humans too. A scientific consensus comes about by scientists being convinced one by one, individually, that the evidence is good enough to warrant a consensus. This is not a politic decision, but a purely scientific decision by each scientist on his/her own. You still do not get that, and probably never will as you lack the necessary experience with this.
You’ve just given the very example of politics in action and label it science. I could make a high handed comment about what that says about you, but unlike you I shall avoid such games.
No, this is not politics, but the way progress is made in science: by consensus when the evidence warrants it. Again, you show that you do not understand how science works.
Lsvalgaard, 9/13/2014 @ur momisugly 7:42 pm: “when scientists think that the laws of science are discoveries of nature’s laws. All false. Science doesn’t deal with the Real World, … Science deals with projections of the Real World on the senses and man’s instruments.” [¶] Yet, the laws of science that you [say] do not deal with the real world work wonderfully in constructing the things our civilization relies upon or accomplishes, like lasers, GPS, electron microscopes, going to the moon, landing on comets. All real stuff constructed and you claim are based on false and unreal notions. It is clear that your grasp of science is less than sufficient for a meaningful discussion [as your comments so starkly confirm].[¶] “Participate in a dialog” Modern science does not progress via dialogs, by [but] from experiment and deductions from those. Furthermore, a dialog presumes at least some modicum of common ground and background knowledge which seem to be so sorely lacking in your comments. Bold text and emphasis added.
1. Recently LS wrote, sitting on the fence is a prudent thing for a good scientist to do. Really? Have you built a consensus around that? Of course, that observation is taken out of context, just as you did above. You failed to include the part in bold.
2. The bit you reproduced was talking about science, not the laws of science. The existence of technology does not demonstrate that someone discovered its underlying scientific laws just lying about in nature. Those laws are manmade, based on evidence that impinged on man’s natural and technological senses.
3. Where in this context did I say anything about “false or unreal notions”? Nevertheless, I’m happy to comply: the existence of scientific consensuses in science, the topic of this thread, is a false and unreal notion.
4. You were getting so close to engaging in a dialog, then you have to go and ruin it with another ad hominem. Your hero, Popper, the man you unwittingly follow, the one who jammed consensus into science by distorting science, the man who invented PMS, did the same thing – twice on the same mission.
Given a rare audience with Wittgenstein, Popper insulted him, causing Wittgenstein to walk out on their discussion. Then given a rare opportunity to make a presentation to Moritz Schlick, Popper personally attacked Wittgenstein, Schlick’s protégé, causing Schlick to walk out on Popper. What Popper was trying to do was establish his creds as a philosopher – don’t laugh – so that Schlick might invited him even to sit in on a Vienna Circle meeting. In the Circle, Schlick was trying to bring Wittgenstein’s views on Positivism into full flower in philosophy.
“Sitting on the fence would have been a prudent thing for a good [philosopher] to do”, but Popper won the day regardless. He could proudly stand with his foot on the carcass of Logical Positivism because the Circle, like all circles, went nowhere. Meanwhile, his PMS has managed to infect most of academic science worldwide. Publish or Perish and consensus by dogma were far easier than making models that actually work! It was like pushing a professor’s car downhill. On that down side, Post Modern scientists tend to be unpleasant, probably because their models don’t work. And LS is one of Popper’s victims.
And that is a bit of history on behind our topic, the “bad reputation” of “‘scientific consensus’”. The girl is a skank.
It is clear that you are no scientist and don’t know what science is or how it works. The various scientific models work VERY well and so describe the real world very accurately, e.g. the calculated electron magnetic moment agrees with the measured one to better than one in a trillion. You babble about PMS and Popper, etc. Real scientists don’t care about this. If a theory yields values that agree well with experiment, it is deemed a good theory and will garner ‘general agreement’, i.e. scientific consensus.
Correction: The walk-out stories are in the wrong order. One writer attributes the Wittgenstein exodus to 1945. Only the story about Schlick walking out on Popper could have had any effect on the VC. Schlick was assassinated in 1936, the year generally given as the end of the VC, an ending assured by the Nazis.
Re: John Whitman, 9/15/14 @ur momisugly 10:39 am
John,
I am not as well read as you in formal philosophy, so if I relied on Positivism, Metaphysics, Kant, dualism, or “verifiability theory of meaning”, it was accidental.
The lessons of Wittgenstein’s propositions, Russell’s paradox, and Gödel’s Theorems are that we must avoid all forms of self-referencing. If we are meaningfully to compare philosophy and science, we need to find a point of observation external to both. Metaphysics is external to science by definition, but it is internal to philosophy.
My nomination for the external observation point is, I believe, Wittgenstein’s: natural language and logic, which I find embedded in natural language. From this stance, we write sentences (propositions) which may be true or false, and use the various methods of proof to develop the consequences. That may be what is mean by “ordinary language philosophy”, and it is my authority to use logic divorced from philosophy. The justification is the over-reach of philosophy into everything. Language is truly one of the most remarkable things about nature, and it is our ultimate basis for communication and thought.
Wittgenstein likely invented Logical Atomism in the Tractatus (1922). He wrote about all sorts of concepts — language, propositions, elementary propositions, objects, pictures, things, entities, thoughts, signs, metaphysical, and especially here, atomic facts, each without a definition. He provides 521 numbered propositions, by which his reader might deduce an ostensive definition. And although Wittgenstein discusses ostensive definitions at length in Philosophical Investigations (1958), he provides no concise definition. Popper and Wittgenstein might have agreed on at least one point: Popper said definitions do not matter.
Wittgenstein’s 520th proposition is this:
6.54 My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them. (He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.) Tractatus (1922) p. 90.
When one gets to the top of that ladder, and having found no glossary, he will indeed call the journey unintelligible.
On the other hand, Wittgenstein does discuss the definition of facts, to say:
The world consists of facts: facts cannot strictly speaking be defined, but we can explain what we mean by saying that facts are what make propositions true, or false. Wittgenstein (1922) p. 10.
What in the world! Facts are like love, we know them when we see them? He continues,
What is complex in the world is a fact. Id., p. 8.
No wonder. Lacking a definition of fact, the reader is at a loss to know its attributes. However, we can corral it a bit.
2.141 The picture is a fact. Id., p. 28.
2.223 In order to discover whether the picture is true or false we must compare it with reality. Id., p. 30.
So we know that some facts, the one which are pictures, are true or false. Wittgenstein doesn’t answer the question whether all facts have a truth value. Sometimes he says they may have an existence.
This problem with facts is pervasive in science, too. Fact has been a free word in science, so I define it as I did on 9/12/14 at 6:44 am: a fact is an observation, reduced to a measurement and compared to a standard. This is a stipulative definition, and is permissible. It is the way fact is used in science.
The facts in science have no truth value, and the facts in philosophy cannot be measured or meaningfully compared to standards. Moreover, because philosophy, along with the other humanities, have elements which cannot be reduced to fact, they cannot be represented by scientific models. I drew no “scientific conclusions” as you suggest in this little linguistic analysis.
I do not contend, as you suggest, that “science’s conclusions can be validated (or rejected) using … the ‘verifiability theory of meaning’.” What is validated in science are predictions of facts. The method of validation is the acquisition of unused facts corresponding to the predicted facts, and the measure of validation is the probability that the unused facts came from the predicted population.
Science is deductive, not inductive. It’s predictions arise not from repetition and enumeration as Popper imagined, but from Cause & Effect propositions.
Science relies on logic, with all it implications regarding truth and proof, to express its models. However, the models themselves are not subject to proof or test. They are subject to validation as described.
And for closure to the subject of this thread, validation of science has nothing to do with any scientific consensus. The people who rely on consensus for their modeling are not scientists.
The people who rely on consensus for their modeling are not scientists.
You have this exactly backwards. We rely on agreement of a model with hard evidence for reaching consensus. The latter is a necessary and worthwhile thing as it allows progress to be made by scientists building on the accepted work of other scientists.
Jeff Glassman on September 15, 2014 at 3:50 pm
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Jeff Glassman,
I sincerely enjoy this discussion which in the end does come back to the main post topic of consensus. (see my last paragraph below)
My criticism, that is the essence of my side of our wonderful discussion, was with this statement of yours,
When I see a scientist seemly critical of all abstracts (concepts, universals, ideas) per se, then I will try to show the scientist that he does use fundamental abstracts necessarily to do his science.
I think we can tie back the consensus concept to this discussion of ours. We might agree that ‘consensus’ is an abstract. Discussion of whether there is merit in that abstract’s application to a scientific context is important. Do you agree? My conclusion about ‘consensus’ wrt ‘science’ is it has the trivial meaning of agreement which is not in any way a central epistemic of the scientific method or process or basis.
John
Yes, ‘consensus’ has, indeed, the trivial meaning of ‘general agreement’ and can apply to only a small number of scientists. My own experience is a good example of that. For more than a decade there had been disagreement about reconstruction of the strength of the heliospheric magnetic field in the past. Such disagreement had actually deterred other scientists to use the reconstructions as a basis for their own work. Recently, the disagreements have been resolved [by new evidence and hard work] and the various groups working on such reconstructions have reached a consensus [one scientist at a time on his own] about what the strength should be for the past 180 years, and we now see other scientists build upon that consensus. The number of people involved in the reconstructions and in the consensus is as small as about 20.
About the intellectual basis for science, I’ll would simply join the chorus [the consensus if you will] that such basis is not important, just “shut up and compute”.
John 9/17/14 @ur momisugly 12:32 pm,
You have read too much into what I wrote. The humanities are nothing if not abstract, but that is a distinction compared to science, not a criticism. All schools of knowledge are valid, each according to its own definition and pleasure. Scientific knowledge, which is containerized in its models, has, and can have, no abstractions, and it is valid only to the measurable extent that future facts fit its significant predictions to make theories and laws out of conjectures and hypotheses.
Consensuses are squishy creatures. Rarely are they found concrete, and then only if defined unambiguously and measured accordingly. IPCC-type climate scientists claim a 97% consensus exists for AGW, but the denominator, the 100%, consists of those who publish in approved professional journals that are house organs for the dogma. Any such sample is certain to be a huge consensus. The Occupiers who infect our streets claim to be a 99% consensus, but the 100% would seem to be Marxists who never bathe. Consensuses include pre-election polls, and the good ones are known only after the fact.
Criticism is reserved for those who claim to have witnessed consensuses in science, and who further claim consensuses are an ingredient in scientific models. The same applies to any subjective element.
Is there an example anywhere on Earth of a school that in the normal course of a rigorous scientific curriculum also teaches the meaning of science as a branch of knowledge? Science students are left to deduce a meaning from OJT, a lesson that seems never to take. They will come to an erroneous idea about science with no idea of its origin, e.g., consensus and Popper.
The exclusion of the subjective is one powerful tenet of science. It filters out beliefs, supernatural, peer review, editorial review, consensuses, expert opinion, and Popper. The inclusion of Cause & Effect filters in predictions and deduction in place of induction. The short form on which educators, scientists, policymakers, and the lay public can hang their hat is this: scientific models must work.
Leif Svalgaard on September 17, 2014 at 3:04 pm
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Leif Svalgaard,
I think you actually are saying it is prudent first to evaluate the reasonable basis of the task in science you are focusing on. Then if it is sufficient proceed to do the computing. Right? If it doesn’t matter what the basis of science is then I could argue that then of course you get the IPCC’s scientific assessment process and also get their computing myopia and failures.
On the other topic of consensus, consensus as agreement in science means there are very numerous consensuses in existence in climate science at any given time. The higher number of people in one of the consensuses compared to another is not a relevant epistemic in the scientific process and it should not be.
John
I agree, the number of people partaking in the consensus doesn’t matter. What matters is who those people are. Are they ‘experts’ in the field? Have they led the way before? Are their arguments compelling? Some might say that that is appealing to authority, but it is not. You listen to the opinion of the chief surgeon, not to the clinic janitor when having an operation.
lsvalgaard on September 17, 2014 at 6:33 pm
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Leif,
I have a generic position that it is not valid reasoning to use any analogy in strictly science related dialogs. So, I cannot go with you on your analogic journey into medical context versus scientific context. But, I think we have found some good fundamental agreement because I think you use the word ‘expert’ and as I would use the expression ‘achievement with demonstrated integrity’.
If a group of scientists in agreement (a consensus) on some aspect of a theory / hypothesis /observational dataset are publically known to all have a very high level (namely the highest among the science community) of ‘achievement with demonstrated integrity’ over their whole professional behavior, then for me it gives that group of scientists right to more of my most precious commodity, my time and focus. Other groups with less ‘achievement with demonstrated integrity’ aren’t discounted out of hand but most likely would not get as much of my time and focus. Do you give your time and focus to various consensuses in accordance with some criteria like that?
John
For me the ‘expert’ is the scientist who has performed to my satisfaction in the past and has demonstrated solid work or present evidence that I consider ‘hard’ and compelling. I consider myself competent to make such judgement on my own within the field I [and the expert] work. Even in this age of high specialization, any physicist is capable of making such judgement simply by following the literature related to the subject. Granted, that this may be somewhat of a chore, but if it is important to my own work [or have at least aroused my curiosity] I would [and could] do this.That I may agree with a scientist does not mean that I have joined any consensus. Only if my own work corroborates or extends his work, can I be considered [by me] to be part of the consensus.
The analogy certainly holds, to wit: the people here who pontificate on ‘consensus’ without being scientists [the janitors].
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Jeff Glassman,
It is the begged question we both are talking about; question of what is man-made subjectivity and what is objective independent of the man-made . The philosophy of analysis and it derivative called logical positivism have not arisen to the level of objective. ‘Analysis philosophy” and that part of analysis philosophy known as “logical positivism” has the following four premises as its fundamental basis:
Analysis & Logical Positivist Premise #1 – Logical Atomism (a metaphysical abstract / concept / universal / idea)
Analysis & Logical Positivist Premise #2 – Verifiability theory of Meaning (an epistemological abstract / concept / universal / idea)
Analysis & Logical Positivist Premise #3 – Conventional versus Analytical Distinctions of ‘a priori’ (a metaphysical plus an epistemological abstract / concept / universal / idea)
Analysis & Logical Positivist Premise #4 – Emotivist Theory of Value (an ethics abstract / concept / universal / idea)
I think none of those four premises are valid in the sense of being objective formulations of their intended areas; that is they are not contained in a philosophy of reason.
So, we can continue on that, but add to that the question of why the appearance of the ‘philosophy of analysis’ and its sub philosophy ‘logical positivism’? Where did it develop from in prior history of philosophy and where does it sit in the history of philosophy since its height in the early to mid 20th century? I think the ‘philosophy of analysis’ and its sub-theme ‘logical positivism’ was a resurfacing of a ~200 year moment in the history of philosophy. And I think all of Kant’s philosophy was a response to that same moment.
As regards Popper, in metaphysics and epistemology he supported the premises which were the basis of the ‘philosophy of analysis’ and it sub-theme ‘logical positivism’. If the ‘philosophy of analysis’ and it sub theme ‘logical positivism’ are invalidated by applied reasoning, as I think they are, then Popper is also.
You ask,
I know of none that exist formally in brick and mortar. But on the internet I am quite positive science students can find extensive and adequate focus on the philosophy of science focused on applied reasoning in the theory of knowledge. But, are they interested in it? It is extremely rare that they are interested by my experience.
I continue to love this subject matter.
John
teaches the meaning of science as a branch of knowledge
I don’t think there is such a thing as ‘the meaning of science’.
question of what is … subjectivity and what is objective. John Whitman, 9/21/14 @ur momisugly 10:48 am.
Philosophy is like Law — both fields feed on ambiguity. Science, by contrast, has zero tolerance for ambiguity. Sometimes philosophy seems to consist solely of ambiguous concepts, including reality, existence, objectivity/subjectivity, meaning, notions inextricably bound up with truth and the definition of philosophy itself. Truth has 5 or 6 different definitions, and several synonyms, e.g., actual, exist, accurate and of course true. So here’s a hypothetical: would philosophy stripped of all concepts and implications of truth be the empty set?
analysis philosophy known as “logical positivism” has the following four premises as its fundamental basis: … Id..
J.T. Blackmore in Ernst Mach: His Life, Work, and Influence (1972) tried to answer the question whether Mach was a Positivist. Mach, sometimes identified as a founder of Logical, Moral, Ethical, Juridical, Scientific, or vanilla Positivism, rejected the whole idea, denied that he followed any philosophy, and suggested that science students needn’t bother learning philosophy at all. Blackmore categorically analyzes what Positivism can mean. (1) The philosophy of Auguste Comte. (2) Belief in the desirability of scientific and technological progress. (3a) a materialistic and atheistic philosophy. (3b) an exaggerated importance of the empirical in science. (3c) over-concentration on minutiae. (3d) misapplication of the mathematical, formalistic and idealistic methods. (4) Scientific methodology making philosophy relatively irrelevant. The list is intrinsically valuable, though it doesn’t, and can’t, help much with problem of trying to force Mach and science into the mold of formal philosophy.
But on the internet I am quite positive science students can find extensive and adequate focus on the philosophy of science focused on applied reasoning in the theory of knowledge.
Adequate? Can one find on the Internet that Science has none of the problems that characterize Philosophy (distinguishing between philosophy and Philosophy)? That science is the objective branch of knowledge? That scientific knowledge is not concerned with truth, and that scientific propositions have no truth value? That all existence is a presumption in science? That science is a mapping on facts to facts, and that the intersection of scientific facts and philosophical facts is empty? That scientific facts are signals impinging on senses, measured and compared to standards? That universal generalizations are definitions in science, not models? That consensus, peer preview, publication, falsification (Type II errors), tenets of Post Modern Science, are irrelevant to scientific knowledge? That success in science is measured solely by the predictive power of its models? That science trades Type I and Type II errors, weighted by costs? That Cause & Effect propositions are the means of prediction? That Cause & Effect and definitions are irrelevant to Post Modern Science? That Post Modern Science is the creation of Karl R. Popper? That crackpots like Paul Feyerabend and George Soros trained under Popper?
The whole thing is about a one day seminar. Without this simple introduction, you get people, even PhDs in science, who say things like I don’t think there is such a thing as ‘the meaning of science’ (lsvalgaard, 9/21/14 @ur momisugly 11:04 am) and Consensus that is based on hard evidence is perfectly valid [and necessary] (Leif Svalgaard, 9/9/14 @ur momisugly 4:31 pm), and subjective claptrap like this:
Only ‘well-established’ RFs are quantified. ‘Well established’ implies that there is qualitatively both sufficient evidence and sufficient consensus from published results to estimate a central RF estimate and a range. ‘Evidence’ is assessed by an A to C grade, with an A grade implying strong evidence and C insufficient evidence. Strong evidence implies that observations have verified aspects of the RF mechanism and that there is a sound physical model to explain the RF. ‘Consensus’ is assessed by assigning a number between 1 and 3, where 1 implies a good deal of consensus and 3 insufficient consensus. This ranks the number of studies, how well studies agree on quantifying the RF and especially how well observation-based studies agree with models. The product of ‘Evidence’ and ‘Consensus’ factors give the LOSU rank. These ranks are high, medium, medium-low, low or very low. Ranks of very low are not evaluated. The quoted 90% confidence range of RF quantifies the value uncertainty, as derived from the expert assessment of published values and their ranges. IPCC, AR4, Ch. 2, p. 200, ¶2.9.1 Uncertainties in Radiative Forcing.
who say things like “I don’t think there is such a thing as ‘the meaning of science” (lsvalgaard, 9/21/14 @ur momisugly 11:04 am) and “Consensus that is based on hard evidence is perfectly valid [and necessary]” (Leif Svalgaard, 9/9/14 @ur momisugly 4:31 pm)
are good illustrations of how it should be. And you are quite correct that the intersection between Science and Philosophy is Empty.
Scientific consensus has screwed up physics for the past 100 years.
Aether has mass. Aether physically occupies three dimensional space. Aether is physically displaced by the particles of matter which exist in it and move through it.
The Milky Way’s halo is not a clump of dark matter traveling along with the Milky Way. The Milky Way is moving through and displacing the aether.
The Milky Way’s halo is the state of displacement of the aether. The Milky Way’s halo is the deformation of spacetime.
A moving particle has an associated aether displacement wave. In a double slit experiment the particle travels through a single slit and the associated wave in the aether passes through both.
In a double slit experiment it is the aether that waves.
[Per site policy, choose ONE email address and ONE login/user_id (Mike, or mpc755) and stick with it. .mod]
• Math Forum lists 10 posts by Michael P. Cavedon “mpc755”@ur momisuglyg-mail.com.
• Quron has ~26 posts by Mike Cavedon with 31 hits on “aether”. A separate page discusses whether his posts are “scientifically accurate”. A PhD in physics says he can’t be engaged on a physics topic. A poster says, “I will observe Qura’s policies and not call Cavedon a crackpot.”
• CosmoQuest blogs forum has banned mpc755.
• mpc755 is a Power Member of physforum.com with 1,261 posts as of 8/19/2008. On 2/3/11, the forum twice suspended him: [Moderator: Suspended 20 days for repeated ignoring moderation, and lying about physics.]; [Moderator: Suspended 10 MORE days for repeated evading moderation, and creating sockpuppets.] So he changed his name to mpc7555, where he became a Newbie. On 3/6/2011, he returned as mpc755. On 3/6/2011: [Moderator: Banned]
The same transaction occurred again on 3/9/2011, now against mpc755555. Then as mpc7555555: [Moderator: Previously banned user banned again.]
Then as mpc575, a Newbie, first post: [Moderator: Banned again.]
Physics Forum @ur momisugly Drexel created a special thread called “mpc755’s Inability to do Physics, Blah Blah Blah Blah
• A poster called liquidspacetime appeared on forums.randi.org where he is shown suspended as of 7/29/2014. He had managed 1,485 posts on the subject of the aether, and variously its mass, its displacement, its waves, its compressibility, and the double slit experiment.
Now he thinks physics is “screwed up”, and that it’s due to the “scientific consensus”.
The artwork brought this ti mind:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/nsh/
“1) You can’t quantify any consensus”. Of course I can. Just count the people Lsvalgaard [LS], 9/18/14 @ur momisugly 8:11 am
And at the same time, I agree, the number of people partaking in the consensus doesn’t matter. . LS, 9/17/14 @ur momisugly 6:33 pm.
Que?
What matters is who those people are. LS @ur momisugly 6:33 pm.
A count is not an answer to “who”. A Count might be.
“2) The problem is not what drives a consensus,” […] Id. @ur momisugly 8:11 am.
LS repeats his disputed statement and ignores the challenge in 2) (now an ellipsis). The issue is what LS thinks a consensus drives. He has made clear that he thinks consensuses drive scientific knowledge, even though he can provide no example of a model relying on a consensus.
“3) Your ‘hard evidence’ is undefined”. Hard evidence is very well defined, namely as that which compels a consensus. Id. @ur momisugly 8:11am.
Everyone knew the Earth was flat. Following LS’s view, we needn’t know what compelled that consensus to be assured that it was “hard evidence” – by definition. The consensus was that the Sun revolved around Earth. LS’s model doesn’t help us identify the evidence, but we can be sure that it is his “hard evidence”. (BTW, the Sun does revolve around the Earth — in Earth coordinates.)
What matters is who those people are. Are they ‘experts’ in the field? … You listen to the opinion of the chief surgeon, not to the clinic janitor when having an operation. LS, 9/17/14 @ur momisugly 6:33 pm
What makes someone an expert? Who decides? If LS can distinguish between an expert in science and a crank, then he deserves the Nobel prize. Why wouldn’t Jan Hendrik Schön be an expert in nanotechnology? Why wouldn’t Linus Pauling be an expert in the efficacy of Vitamin C megadoses? Or Michael Mann on AGW? Or Andrew Wakefield on public health? Or Margaret Mead on anthropology? Or Carl Sagan on the Kuwaiti oil fires? Or Arthur Smith Woodward on paleontology? Or Kermit Gosnell on obstetrics. LS must think educated people signal that they are wrong by taking off their scrubs and stethoscope and putting on overalls and grabbing a push broom. The test is never the who of anything; it’s always the what of predictions.
Have they led the way before?
Does “led the way” mean published in a suitable approved, i.e., conforming, journal? Or received a doctorate? Those listed above made the grade.
Are their arguments compelling?
Arguments, and not models? Can a case be compelling when it is made for a model that doesn’t work? Or conversely, as LS declined to answer previously, suppose the model works and the argument stinks?
Some might say that that is appealing to authority, but it is not. Id., 6:33 pm
Right! Appealing to authority only looks like appealing to authority because it appeals to authority.
“1) You can’t quantify any consensus”. Of course I can. Just count the people …
the number of people partaking in the consensus doesn’t matter …
What matters is who those people are”
Que?
No contradiction at all. The count is irrelevant, but possible.
“2) The problem is not what drives a consensus,” […]
He has made clear that he thinks consensuses drive scientific knowledge
I think you have a reading problem. I have lost count of how many times I have made clear that any consensus derives from the knowledge gained by the evidence given.
“3) Your ‘hard evidence’ is undefined”.
No, it is very well defined. If it convinces me, it is hard’.
Who decides?
Each individual scientist decide on his own if the evidence is good enough for him.
If LS can distinguish between an expert in science and a crank
In the vast majority of cases that is immediately obvious to anybody with even cursory knowledge.
LS must think educated people …
You education matters not if the object under contention is not part of what you have been educated in.
Does “led the way” mean published in a suitable approved,…
‘led the way’ as far as I am concerned.
Are their arguments compelling?
If they were to me, that is enough for me.
Arguments, and not models?
A model is the encapsulation [or shorthand] of the evidence and arguments pertaining to the object under scrutiny. A model gains prominence and general acceptance by providing correct predictions.
suppose the model works and the argument stinks?
That might in some cases be enough, although in general it is not.
Right! Appealing to authority only looks like appealing to authority because it appeals to authority.
no scientist is appealing to authority, but makes up his mind independently. Even if the experts have a consensus, that may not be important to an individual scientist, who is free to reject the consensus.